experimental music toronto

The top 5 experimental music venues in Toronto

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The top venues for experimental music in Toronto are as offbeat as the shows they host. From a church dedicated to avant-garde programming to cozy/cockroach-inhabited second floor walk ups, experimental music makes its home where it can in a city of condos and $9 smoothies, er, juices .

Out of necessity, noise, improv, drone , and weirdo gigs galore pop up at any venue that will open its doors to the less-than-musical, from bars to living spaces. Fringe events happen everywhere from Jam Factory (current home of Feast in the East) to Holy Oak to The Garrison to Wychwood Barns (not to mention the odd under-the-bridge show). Few venues in the city make a go of it hosting even semi-regular experimental shows, so kudos to anyone who's ever said "sure, why not" to a post metal-gaze modular noise jam.

For those seeking disharmony and the challenges that accompany it, here are Toronto's best experimental music venues.

The Music Gallery In a town dominated by musicians looking make quick dough writing commercial-ready indie jingles and playing to halls of young adults who just showed up for a free beer, the Music Gallery has emerged as Toronto's most established voice in the experimental and sound art community. Tucked away in a modest yet lovely downtown church, the acoustics are great, minds are open, and the vibe is relaxed (drinks in the courtyard!) yet reverent to the art. They also host Toronto's annual X Avant New Music Festival each fall.

The Tranzac Oh, the stories the carpet in the Tiki Room could tell. Named by Nadja as Toronto's best venue (not great enough to keep the world renown duo in Toronto, unfortunately) this multi room and multi use space run by the Toronto Australia New Zealand Club (yeah, random) has hosted some of the city's most memorable experimental shows including Bummer in the Summer and the Nihilist Spasm Band. Without the tiny, casual bar room in front many fringe artists would find themselves with nowhere to play. The Tranzac also houses the Toronto Zine Library .

Double Double Land Few DIY spaces experience longevity, but after four years hard-to-find (up the alley and up the stairs) Double Double Land in Kensington Market have proved they have all the sugar and caffeine it takes to create a sustainable hub for extra-non-commercial concerts, dance parties, and art events. Few Toronto venues deliver quality programming as consistently: at DDL, whether an event is jammed to the point of heat stroke or sparsely attended, one won't soon forget it (personal fave: Angels in America , 2011-ish). It's also a good spot to shoot music videos .

Array Space If there is such a thing, Array is a home for Toronto's more classic avant-guard. The studio space on Walnut hosts low key performances, workshops, and jams. They were one of three Toronto venues to participate in Weird Canada's Drone Day , but the ship is run so tightly that when I showed up late, the music was already over. Rare form.

Geary Lane It may look suspect to include a space officially open for less than an entire summer, but such is the lifespan of the DIY venue. As Tad Michalak (Feast in the East) put it (shout out time): "it's really hard to keep these venues, often DIY ventures, alive... Teranga when it existed was a real hub, so was Korova Milk Bar , Jeff Garcia's Earthship, Somewhere There [now a transient collective ], Placebo Space [now in Etobicoke ]." The vast warehouse space (with swanky upstairs patio!) aims to de-sketch-ify the genre, with founders Man Finds Fire committed to supporting outsider art.

RATIO Officially opening shortly after Geary Lane (as in, last month), low profile Ratio is located in Kensington Market in a second floor space that feels as homey as Weird Canada's shortly lived Infinite Library . They've only hosted a few shows so far, but see above re: ephemeral venues and check this one out while you can. The vibe is ideal for detail-oriented music, with pillows on the floor, benches along the walls, and a relaxed but serious appreciation for live performance - even if it is sometimes just an artist turning dials, brow furrowed.

Photo of Wild Bengal Tigers (Germaine Liu & Jason Doell) at The Music Gallery via Facebook.

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Before the Covid-19 pandemic brought live performances across the globe to a screeching halt, Toronto’s left-field jazz scene was in the midst of a dramatic upswing—so much so that it was beginning to spawn its own network of branches and tributaries.

“The Toronto community has three main threads: a traditional jazz scene, an improvised music scene, and a bent song craft scene knitting together elements of folk, chamber music, and an indie-rock ethos,” says bassist Pete Johnston , one of three founders of the experimental label All-Set! “Very often the style of music is less important than the relationships between the players.”

The origins of Toronto’s contemporary scene date back at least as far as 1962, the year when the Artists’ Jazz Band are credited with introducing free jazz to Canada. Three of the group’s founders—Michael Snow, Graham Coughtry, and Nobuo Kubota—would go on to launch the Music Gallery label and artist-run center, while performing as members of its avant-garde house band, the CCMC . (Depending who you ask, that acronym could stand for the Canadian Creative Music Collective or Cries Crashes Murmurs Cranks.) Labels like Sackville Records , Spool Music , and Rat-Drifting sprang up to document creatively fertile eras, providing a home for prolific artists and collaborations that are active to this day.

Since opening its Brunswick Avenue location in 1971, the TRANZAC (Toronto Australia New Zealand Club) has become a hub for the local jazz community. With three live rooms of varying sizes, attendees can encounter intimate solo performances, large ensemble concerts, monthly residencies, and one-off jam sessions. Even in our new reality of isolation, TRANZAC regulars continue to perform in   weekly live streams .

Other venues giving a stage to Toronto’s left-field musicians include the Music Gallery, Canadian Music Centre, Arraymusic studio (presenting their own live stream performances ), and bars such as the Emmett Ray and Wenona Lodge. The latter is home to local music archivist Joe Strutt ’s monthly live series, Track Could Bend, which brings together “improvised music and weird rock offshoots,” with artists of all genres exploring unfamiliar territories.

“We are in the middle of a big momentum shift,” says Mani Mazinani, founder of the Aerophone Recordings label who has collaborated with Michael Snow since 2002. “Artists are producing more, releasing more, and playing more. But it sometimes feels like planting seeds. We’ll see a more pronounced upswing once we can focus more international attention here. And our community deserves international attention, because something interesting is happening.”

In recent years, those seeds have taken the form of new festivals celebrating experimental music such as TONE , Somewhere There , and Women From Space . The city’s longest running jazz club, The Rex, is commonly associated with traditional music for walk-in crowds, yet even they have begun welcoming left-field artists. One of these is saxophonist Brodie West , who credits Toronto’s ongoing evolution to a changing of the guard. “The newer generation of musicians continues to become less homogenous and white-male-dominated,” he says. “That is very positive, if long overdue.”

Here are just a few contemporary releases highlighting left-field jazz in Toronto.

Lina Allemano Glimmer Glammer

On this strikingly intimate solo trumpet album, Lina Allemano employs circular breathing, uses a cookie tin as a resonator, and creates live sound collages by manipulating objects in her left hand while playing horn with her right. The mournful melody of “One Man Down,” which closes the set, is a dedication to local musician Justin Haynes, who passed away suddenly in 2019. Along with Glimmer Glammer Allemano, who splits her time between Toronto and Berlin, has also recently released Rats and Mice , the twitchy, beguiling debut album from her Ohrenschmaus trio with Norwegian bassist Dan Peter Sundland and German drummer Michael Griener.          

See Through 4 False Ghosts, Minor Fears

Pete Johnston describes this sprightly album from his See Through Music project—which has taken the form of duos, trios, quartets, and quintets—as a reconnection with his roots. Along with the standards he played growing up with his jazz musician father, he cites Carla Bley, Ornette Coleman, and even ‘80s King Crimson as formative influences. “I wanted both the drive and compositional intricacy of progressive rock with the improvisatory looseness of jazz,” he says. It comes hot on the heels of See Through 4’s Bog Standards , another album re-imagining songs from the bassist’s back catalogue.

Ways + Simon Toldam Fortunes

Alto saxophonist Brodie West’s creative cohorts include Dutch post-punk band The Ex , drummer Han Bennink , and the late Ethiopian icon Gétatchèw Mèkurya (a large-looming influence on West’s group Eucalyptus ). In the duo Ways, West is joined by in-demand drummer Evan Cartwright ( U.S. Girls , Tasseomancy , Jerry Paper ). For this album, the pair traveled to Copenhagen to record with pianist Simon Toldam , a winner of four Danish Jazz Grammys who has worked with European left-field legends such as Bennink, Evan Parker , and Peter Brötzmann . The songs of Fortunes are sparse and haunting, hovering in and out of focus like smoke rings in candlelight.    

Rob Clutton Trio Counsel of Primaries

Double bassist Rob Clutton has played with luminaries including Anthony Braxton , Jandek, and Eugene Martynec of Toronto psych heroes Kensington Market, and has racked up a string of notable releases, like his 1995 cassette with the Free Music Trio, along with solo offerings on Rat-Drifting, and gorgeous group albums with The Cluttertones . The 2020 debut from his eponymous power trio continues his career of experimentation, swinging from one playful passage to the next. “There is much more of a sense of support than competition,” says Clutton on the city’s jazz community. “Though it’s always good for me to hear so many great bass players who kick my butt.”

Karen Ng Here

No list of forward-thinking Toronto jazz artists would be complete without Karen Ng . Alongside co-organizing the TONE festival with scene stalwart Tad Michalak, the saxophonist plays with both the Rob Clutton Trio and See Through 4, alongside pop artists such as Andy Shauf . “What interests me as a musician are tone/timbre, form/narrative, and perspective/context,” says Ng. “While I won’t be skronking away during an Andy Shauf set, I’m listening in detail, I’m thinking about blend. I work on form and dynamics much in the same way I would if I were improvising with the CCMC.”

Colin Fisher Quartet Living Midnight

Colin Fisher’s booming laugh and boundless creative spirit flows throughout various Toronto scenes. While this pulse-quickening quartet album on Texas label Astral Spirits provided a high-profile co-sign for the multi-instrumentalist, it is just one drop in the pool. Fisher has previously joined Philadelphia group Many Arms for an album on John Zorn’s Tzadik, released a solo guitar album on Jeremy Greenspan’s Geej Recordings, and blown minds with his avant-rock duo Not The Wind, Not The Flag . This year also saw Fisher contribute guitar and tenor sax to Caribou’s Suddenly , following his membership in the Caribou Vibration Ensemble alongside Sun Ra ’s Marshall Allen.

Nick Fraser / Kris Davis / Tony Malaby Zoning

Drummer Nick Fraser ‘s name pops up time and time again as the propulsive force behind the Rob Clutton Trio, See Through 4, Eucalyptus, Lina Allemano’s Titanium Riot, along with many other groups. On this fittingly titled album, Fraser rumbles with power amidst of claustrophobic collisions of sound, and softly shuffles through moments of quiet, placid beauty. “Both in my playing and my composing, I like to leave a lot of things to chance,” said Fraser in a recent DownBeat profile . “I like to be pleasantly surprised by the results.”

The Titillators Your Kind of Music

The most unclassifiable (and fun!) album on this list is the debut release from Toronto left-field jazz supergroup The Titillators. With a pared-down lineup of Tania Gill on synth, Ryan Driver on street sweeper bristle bass, and Thom Gill’s sunny whistled melodies, they create a syrupy cocktail with the breezy sonic flavor of “Don’t Worry, Be Happy.”

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Top 5 Unusual (But Awesome) Places to Perform in Toronto as an Emerging Band

It will come as no surprise to anyone that lives there, but for a city that is often denigrated to "safe," "polite," and "clean" by much of the rest of the world, Toronto has a great selection of alternative venues. Some of these spaces have been around for decades, while others have more recently opened their doors. But alongside the bars and clubs that typically host live music on any given night, you’re just as likely to stumble across some great music happening in house basements, backyards, or reclaimed warehouse spaces across the city.

We've already looked at some of Toronto's best entry-level venues . Now, here’s a look at a handful of the city’s best alternative venues for you to check out.

The first thing you notice about Soybomb after the giant halfpipe in the center of the room is the very strong sense of community that permeates the space. Familiar faces will be manning the door or taking care of the soundboard for the always-packed shows. Bands set up in the middle of the halfpipe and play to really enthusiastic crowds. Soybomb has been hosting shows since 2003, and while they currently only plan on doing four shows a year, those nights promise to be some of the most fun in the city. Alongside live music, the space is also a host for some other generally rad things including a local Food Not Bombs chapter, potlucks, movie nights, skate sessions, and parties.

2. Geary Lane

The area of the city that Geary Lane inhabits is largely industrial. The train tracks that cut through the neighborhood separate it from much of the surrounding area, but it’s also just down the street from one of the city’s biggest rehearsal spaces, which adds to the creative air wafting through the Dufferin and Dupont area. The space is housed in a 3,000-foot professional film studio and former recording studio, and organizers say the space can be transformed to fit just about any creative need. They host four to six events per month, and the owners tell me they "also have theater rehearsals and productions, film and photography shoots, public workshops, and regular rehearsals for large community drumming groups and dance companies." One recent event saw the space transformed into "an original paper-and-garbage playground with over 20 artists, architects, and designers who built 15 installations out of reclaimed materials."

3. Faith / Void

A photo posted by @faithvoidshop on Dec 3, 2015 at 7:35pm PST

This DIY record/zine shop has only been open for a few months, first cracking its doors in October of 2015. But for only being around for such a short while, it's already ingratiated itself into the local scene, holding an art show and record swap during Toronto’s growing Not Dead Yet Fest, screenings of animated shorts, and shows. The fact that it's named after a seminal '80s hardcore record should tell you that it caters to the heavier side of music, but it’s a great place to check out if that’s your bag.

4. The Music Gallery

A photo posted by The Music Gallery (@musicgalleryto) on Nov 3, 2015 at 8:06am PST

The Music Gallery was formed by members of a free-inspiration group called CCMC. It’s moved around between a few different locations since its inception, for a period even settling what is now the Great Hall. It moved again in the early 1990s to the periphery of Toronto’s entertainment district, where it hosted up to 150 concerts a year. In 2000, the Music Gallery fell victim to the blight of condominiums. After drifting for a season, it finally settled in its current home at the St. George the Martyr Anglican Church at the southern end of Grange Park. This space might not be for every band, and if you want to play there you’ll have to submit a proposal, but it does showcase acts from across the genre spectrum regularly, so it’s always worth a shot.

5. The Long Winter

A photo posted by Long Winter (@longwinterto) on Mar 13, 2015 at 7:31pm PDT

Okay, so the Long Winter isn’t actually a venue per se , but it does put on some of the most fun events in the city, and its staff does like to throw them in some pretty great spaces. They bill themselves as an inter-arts festival that takes places during the winter months in Toronto. Their usual place of operation is the Great Hall, a four-story building constructed in 1889 that housed various groups until the 1980s, when it became a home for Toronto’s experimental music scene and avant-garde art. At one recent event, the Long Winter took over a slightly derelict but highly endeared mall in the city’s West End, during which abandoned storefronts were taken over by various bands, dance parties, and art installations. The series also releases seven inches, a newspaper, and program posters.

Looking to break your band in Toronto? Be sure to check out these crucial tips !

Ty Trumbull  is a Canadian musician and writer living in Mexico City. He's played banjo and guitar with a bunch of bands you've probably never heard of.

Topics: toronto , Music Business 101 , Booking Gigs & Touring

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We invite you here to explore Arraymusic’s music series , artists and upcoming concerts , performance venue , workshops (for the public, composers, indigenous people and at risk youth), mini-ezines with interviews, concert videos , and our equity action plan.

A Message from the General Director

The dynamic ARRAY ENSEMBLE is known for precisely distinctively performing music that knows no boundaries, for mentoring new generations of composers, for embracing new technologies and multi-disciplinary art, and for programming the world’s most enigmatic and daring voices. 

Arraymusic is unique because it not only commissions exciting new works from composers around the world presenting them in an annual season of concerts for Toronto-based and digital audiences, it co-presents other local and international multi-disciplinary artists whose work falls ‘in between’ genres. And Arraymusic offers space, instruments and technologies to artists affordably so they too can share their music with the world. 

Array’s Space is that rare downtown venue that is welcoming, centrally located, accessible and well equipped, which helps Toronto’s new music scene to thrive. 

Array is devoted to advancing its own and society’s aims to improve equity for BIPOC and marginalized peoples — you can read about Arraymusic’s Equity Action Plan below. 

If you are a composer, sound artist or multi-disciplinary artist working with experimental music, check out Array’s programs that provide mini-grants and commissions (50+ Friends Who Care), mentorship (Composers’ Workshop and Indigenous Creators’ Workshop), a BIPOC fellowship, residencies within our space, free time for BIPOC individuals in need (by application) and (soon to launch) music workshops for at risk youth.

If you’d like to get involved, you can help us actively select which artists we will hire to write music for us this season by becoming one of our 50+ Friends Who Care, or you can donate to our general fund to help Array cover the annual facility’s operating expenses. We are  currently seeking new board members, and we’re always happy to work with new volunteers! It’s your support that makes the difference! 

If you are new to Arraymusic, we invite you to take a little time learn more about us, and to reach out anytime. We invite everyone to take in our concerts and explore our blogs, videos, composer talks, and interactive mini-zines this season to discover the rich array of artists we present from near and far. 

We hope you enjoy! David Schotzko, General Director

Arraymusic’s mission is to ignite and sustain a passion for contemporary Canadian musical art within an equitable, international, interdisciplinary context. 

Three interrelated programs define what Array does, why we do it and how we realize our artistic, organizational, and community-based goals:

• Array’s Contemporary Music Program  produces, presents and supports diverse work on the cutting edges of current musical/sound art practice;
• Array’s Creative Music Hub  utilizes the Array Space to foster a thriving, inclusive contemporary music and art scene; and
• Array For All  engages diverse and equity seeking audiences through innovative programs.

Arraymusic believes that experiencing art can give rise to real change and that if one engages art fully, subtle but profound positive transformations can take place that can impact communities and enhance our quality of life. Arraymusic is devoted to co-creating and presenting speculative new music—music that creates more questions than answers (for both the musicians involved and for listeners).

We believe that through sharing music which finds wonder in the discovery of the unexpected, the imagination is stimulated, questions are asked, alternative ways of thinking are considered, and a sharing of ideas takes place. We are devoted to presenting music that draws listeners in, and encourages them to embrace musical experiences as experimental (both words derived from the Latin root expiri—‘to try’) and know that they are active, co-creative participants in the experience. Music focused on this kind of productive interaction is not confined to any style, methodology or genre. Arraymusic embraces and nurtures work that is radically in-between.

Progressively, Arraymusic situates its creative activities in a cultural context that goes beyond traditional definitions of contemporary classical music. We acknowledge that Arraymusic continues to benefit from the historical privileging of European art forms and the systematic suppression of marginalized voices, and we are committed to continuing to address inequity in all aspects of our programming and organization. 

One critical aspect of this broadening of context is the ongoing development of the Array Space as a creative hub. We see our creative endeavours as being very much in conversation with the pursuits of the many diverse community members who use the Space, our Resident Artist organizations, key artistic and outreach program partners, and those many artists who rent our Space for all manner of arts activities (not only musical). The Array Space BIPOC Access Program supports artists as they rehearse, teach, record and present their work at The Array Space, and we actively seek out Black, Indigenous, non-Black people of colour, LGBTQ2S+, and Deaf, Disabled, and Mad composers, and prioritize the inclusion of their works in our programs.

We also see our activities as part of a global conversation, which has driven us to be at the forefront of web-based initiatives, live-streaming of our events, and making audio-visual records of our and our partners’ work available online. It is in the context of these extremely diverse sets of cultural enterprises that Array works to bring its own artistic vision to fruition.

• WHAT THE CANADIAN ENCYCLOPEDIA SAYS ABOUT ARRAY’S BEGINNINGS https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/arraymusic-emc

As a soloist, chamber musician, and curator, percussionist David Schotzko is a passionate advocate for contemporary composers, having premiered over 300 works with percussion by composers from around the globe. He was a founding member of the renowned International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE) in New York and Chicago and was ICE’s Program Director from 2002 to 2008.

Since moving to Toronto in 2010, David has served as Artistic Advisor for Ottawa Chamberfest, and curated programs for Arraymusic, Intersection, the University of Toronto, and more.

Matt Legge is a recording engineer and producer from Nashville, TN. His engineering work includes major label and independent artists across a broad spectrum, though he is best known for his contributions to the country, rock, and Americana genres. Early in his career, Matt was fortunate to work with Taylor Swift on her multiple Grammy-winning album  Fearless , serving as assistant and engineer on the song “White Horse”. The song would get Matt nominated for a TEC Award in Outstanding Creative Achievement in 2009, and it won Grammy awards for “Best Female Country Vocal Performance” and “Best Country Song” at the 2010 Grammy Awards, as well as being featured on the television show Grey’s Anatomy. This boost to visibility and his unwavering work ethic lead him to engineering for artists Peter Frampton, Ringo Starr, Ricky Skaggs, and Jerry Lee Lewis. His genre-blending style came from his childhood, tinkering with the family’s record players and tape recorders to create mixtapes and remixes of his favorite songs. This influence became evident as his career progressed and he felt more comfortable introducing his ideas into the process. In 2016, with only a few loose ideas written on construction paper and two weeks booked at Nashville’s Omni Studios, Matt and supergroup Hard Working Americans recorded the band’s second full length album  Rest in Chaos.  The album’s producer, Dave Schools (Widespread Panic), was especially welcoming of Matt’s input, having him stitch together ideas from their recordings along with found sounds which they crafted into a full length album. The album surprised many listeners with what the Boston Globe describes as a “Likably twisted strain of cosmic-hippie, gonzo-outlaw music” and “a major step forward for the band”, with Rolling Stone calling it “A fascinating roots-rock collaboration”. Also in 2016, Matt recorded Peter Frampton’s album  Acoustic Classics.  Billboard Magazine reported that Frampton overcame “Stubbornness and fear” to reapproach his classic songs in a way that gave the listener an intimate listening experience as if he were to say “”Hey, sit down, I’ve just written a song’ and I sit down and play you ‘Lines on My Face’ or whatever”. In 2018, Matt and his family moved to Denver, CO where he began producing projects ranging from indie rock to classical. “I want to give people something they’ve never heard, yet feel familiar enough with to accept” became the motto that influenced Matt’s production techniques. Rock critic Dave Marsh wrote of one of his records “I can tell you about its surface but I haven’t gotten to the bottom of it. I’m not really sure there is one.” Matt is excited to continue his audio experimentation at Arraymusic, and is looking forward to creating more magic moments with Toronto’s music community.

Board of Directors

• Mark Wilson, Chair & Treasurer
• Amahl Arulanandam
• Michelle Breslin
• Kendall Kiddie
• Laurie Kwasnik
• David Lidov
• Afraaz Adam Mulji
• Michael Palumbo
• Adam Tindale
• Cynthia Wilkey
• Gayle Young

Zoma is a sound and installation artist and new media instructor. She uses experimental technology and practices to create personal, intuitive and didactic experiences with sound production and performance. She explores the digital and electronic tools used to create and experience sonic artwork, conducts research in music technology, and designs and builds interfaces for digital media production. Zoma currently teaches graphic design and new media at OCAD University and TMU.

Bruce A. Russell aka Ibrahim El Mahboob (he/him, b. 1968) is a composer and self-taught pianist living and working in Toronto (Tkarón:to, the traditional territory of many nations including the Mississaugas of the Credit, the Anishnabeg, the Chippewa, the Haudenosaunee and the Wendat). He studied at York University with James Tenney and Phillip Werren. His early years were spent playing in bands and releasing DIY cassettes of art pop and experimental music, as well as composing predominantly electronic scores for dance, theatre and interdisciplinary productions.

Frustrated by systemic racism, personal struggles, and a lack of interest in his work, he stopped seeking a career in music. He continued composing in private, however, sometimes sharing his work through social media. Interest in his work increased in 2020, resulting in performances by Second Note Duo, Prism Percussion, the San Juan Symphony, Idaho Falls Symphony, Grant Park Orchestra and Regina Symphony Orchestra. Arraymusic presented the first full concert of his music in November of that year, and he will be Composer in Residence at Array for three seasons from 2022 through 2025.

He has composed new works for Gryphon Trio, the Madawaska Quartet and Thin Edge New Music Collective. He is currently creating music for Ian Kamau’s live multi-media work Loss. He was the host of Radio Music Gallery and has written for Musicworks and I Care if You Listen. His interests are in 20th and 21st century concert music especially postminimalism, and music of the African diaspora.

Equity is the single most important challenge in today’s contemporary music scene, and our work as artists, artistic directors, and curators cannot be separated from the social and political contexts in which we all live and create.  

As a legacy organization receiving operating funding from the Canada Council for the Arts, the Ontario Arts Council, the Toronto Arts Council, and numerous private funding bodies large and small, Arraymusic continues to benefit from the historical privileging of European art forms and the systematic suppression of marginalized voices. Much work has been done in classical music and contemporary classical music over the past half century toward achieving gender equity. However, as necessary as that work continues to be to promote women within our discipline, we have for too long overlooked the continued oppression of Black, Indigenous, and non-Black people of colour, of the LGBTQ2S+ community, and of the Deaf, Disabled, and Mad community.

Arraymusic has a relatively reputable history of inclusive programming, and our role as an artistic hub through our management of The Array Space has allowed us to actively support a diverse range of artists from a broad swath of Toronto’s cultural scene. We have publicly committed to gender parity in our own programming through the Canadian League of Composers Gender Parity Pledge, and over the last several seasons we have worked to include more work by composers from marginalized communities and to challenge the inherited values of the western classical canon. We offer Pay-What-You-Want ticketing to overcome economic barriers, and installed a ramp and elevator to enable access for people with physical disabilities. Nonetheless, without a specific commitment to a broader understanding of equity, we have continued to privilege whiteness over other identificatory factors.

Beginning now, in our 2020-21 season Arraymusic will take the following actions:

• We will actively seek out Black, Indigenous, non-Black people of colour, LGBTQ2S+, and Deaf, Disabled, and Mad composers, and will prioritize the inclusion of their works across the balance of our programs.
• We are establishing an annual fellowship for emerging BIPOC composers to support their participation in our annual Young Composers’ Workshop: providing housing and transportation subsidies, as well as a per-diem to offset the substantial costs of spending a month living and working in Toronto. We are able to fund one fellowship during 2020-2021 season and will work to fund additional equity fellowships in upcoming years.  
• Other future initiatives include open calls for proposals to The Array Space’s Resident Ensemble and Co-Presentation programs, where priority will be given to Black, Indigenous, non-Black people of colour, LGBTQ2S+, and Deaf, Disabled, and Mad artists.
• We are seeking to change the organization from within in the coming years, focusing on diversity in all hiring and recruitment decisions: from curatorial leadership to artists, staff, and board.

Most important: we acknowledge that we will inevitably fail at points in this process, and we commit to continually listening, learning, and improving. We invite you to reach out directly to us with comments and criticisms, and will be available via email at:

David Schotzko, General Director [email protected]

Mark Wilson, Chair [email protected]

We look forward to continued change, and to an ongoing public dialog with the many artists, audiences, peers, and supporters working for social justice in the arts and in the world.

To ensure the safety of all Array Space users we have adopted and enforced a strict Anti-Harassment and Discrimination Policy .

The health and safety of our community, clients, and employees is our highest priority and we continue to work collaboratively with our renters to identify and minimize risk levels. We have put together a policy and set of best practice guidelines designed to be taken seriously and put into practice at all times while inside the Array Space. As the pandemic and government restrictions evolve, so too will these protocols.

Click here to review our COVID-19 policies, best practices and guidelines.

Experimental events in Toronto, Canada

8 artists shaping the future of Canadian electronic music

From guttural experimental to jazzy house, artists across the country are dabbling in a wide range of genres.

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There is no shortage of artists in Canada making thrilling and innovative electronic music, but they don't always get a spotlight beyond their respective scenes. There are, of course, Canadian producers like Kaytranada, Rezz, Jacques Greene, Deadmau5, Jayda G, Caribou, Beverly Glenn-Copeland and A-Trak, who are widely known and acclaimed, but it's always refreshing to hear what's being created by underground artists. 

It's hard to qualify electronic music when it encompasses so much — some may hear the term and immediately think of the EDM hits that get frequent radio play, while others may imagine the four-on-the-floor beats that get played in grungy, dimly-lit clubs in Berlin. Both would be on the right track. The emerging Canadian artists and producers selected for this list are making a wide range of sounds, from guttural experimental to jazzy house, U.K. garage to introspective techno. 

Get to know some of the artists shaping the future of Canadian electronic music right now. 

Honeydrip is a Montreal-based DJ and producer who has been embedded in the city's undergound scene for years, from her n10.as radio show Waves of Honey to DJing at countless parties. As a DJ first, she has an ear for sounds that will play well on a dance floor and her debut 2021 EP,  Anti-Ego , is a testament to that. Blending left-field techno, bass and breakbeat, she makes music that moves you and challenges your preconceived ideas simultaneously. Anti-Ego was "heavily influenced by the symbiosis of black culture and electronic music," she shared in the description of the "Brand New Flava" music video . There's a deconstructionist element to her production style, almost like she's reducing the genres to their bare bones. "Brand New Flava," featuring King Shadrock, provides a perfect example of this — mixing dub, techno, dancehall and reggae to create something completely otherworldly. 

Roam crafts sparse and sparkling soundscapes that undulate between moodiness and levity. His music is insular and introspective, exploring the inner workings of a self-proclaimed "disillusioned millennial." In 2018, Noisey referred to him as the "producer bringing dark U.K. garage to Toronto," and he's lived up to that title, releasing two albums and countless singles in the years since. His desire to capture and chronicle millennial ennui informs his take on U.K. garage, two-step and future garage. He cites the films Lost in Translation , Her and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind as influences for his 2020 album The Wraith . The artist himself is shrouded in mystery — his face always obscured, covered or turned away from the camera. 

As Gayance's Bandcamp bio reads, she makes "jazzy-house with Brazilian spices so you can make out with your crush." The Montreal-based artist's 2021 EP,   No Toning Down , perfectly encapsulates that sentiment, especially the opener, "Meu Sol," featuring Maleika Tidjani and Dapapa. The EP was her first foray into her own music making, written over the course of 2020. The music is playful and free-spirited, and heavily influenced by broken beats, U.K. garage, jungle and bossa nova. The Haitian creole origins of her artist name loosely translate to "joyful," and that's what her music inspires in listeners — it's bubbling with fervent energy and jubilance. Gayance is now touring Europe and working on her debut album. 

If you can be regularly found in the pit at festivals like VELD or Bass Coast, then Rumpus is the producer for you. The Regina artist mixes live drumming into his DJ sets and has played everywhere from Burning Man to SXSW. His original tracks have been spun by heavy-hitters like Tiesto, Marshmello and Oliver Heldens. From the funky groove of "You Better" to the bombastic and gritty "Money Maker," he makes music to fill big rooms and wide fields. In 2020, he won the Saskatchewan Music Award for electronic artist of the year and was also nominated for the Western Canadian Music Awards' dance artist of the year. 

Chippy Nonstop 

Chippy Nonstop doesn't like to be idle. As her name suggests, her energy is as relentless as the 150 BPM and faster DJ sets she's become known for. The Toronto-based DJ and producer has lived and toured all over the world (Zambia, Dubai, Germany, the U.S., England, Colombia and more) and picked up things along the way that influence her larger- than-life sound. CBC Music named "Accelerate" off her 2021 self-titled EP one of the most underrated songs of the year for a reason: it's cleverly produced, hot and fun — just like her other releases. Blending techno, hardstyle, drum and bass and sensual vocals, she makes mind-melting songs built for the rave. When she's not commanding a mic or the decks, she works on dismantling hierarchies while running Intersessions, a workshop series dedicated to addressing the gender imbalances in DJing, production and the music business.

DenMother is the experimental electronic music project of Ontario-born, New Brunswick-based artist Sabarah Pilon. The sonic disruptions on her East Coast Music Awards-nominated album, Frantic Ram , were created during COVID lockdowns and are loosely based on Dante's Inferno , the occult, mythology and Jungian archetypes. Pilon's prolific catalogue is full of captivating atmospheres, blending layered vocals, warbly synths and moody percussion. Her music moves from chill ambient moments to industrial experimental screeches, and she uses her flexible voice to toe the line between softness and guttural screams. The songs are like incantations that mesmerize and bewilder.

Ciel is a producer, pianist and DJ from Xi'an, China and is currently based in Toronto. She has cemented herself as a fixture in the city's dance music scene with party series like Work in Progress (predicated on combating the erasure of women DJs in the scene) and It's Not You It's Me. There's a subdued quality to her music-making; it creeps up on you slowly, then all at once it transports you to somewhere new. She has an untethered, exploratory production style, making it difficult to pin down her sound, and her ascent so exciting to witness. So far, her discography incorporates elements of techno, electro, house, garage and footwork. Her 2021 EP, All we Have is Each Other , is a smorgasbord of driving broken beats, two-step, twinkling samples, alien synths and muted drums. 

Patrick Moon Bird 

Patrick Moon Bird used to make hardcore metal, but now he makes lo-fi bedroom pop. It's quite a sonic shift, but the Prince Albert artist is so adept at crafting gorgeous little songs that have an inherent optimism, even when they tackle tough subject matter like depression and bipolar personality disorder. Light, shimmery percussion, gentle synths, far-away vocals and subtle kick drums make his sound approachable and inviting, like a tender caress that engulfs you. He released two albums this year, Going Through the Motions and High School , and both are phenomenal soundtracks for pensive moments in isolation. They encourage the mind to wander and spiral in the best ways. 

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